Ask Greil: June 26, 2023

You'll get a kick out of this Hullabaloo clip. —JAMES R. STACHO

Wow. I wish I'd had that “Blowin' in the Wind” closer when I was writing Folk Music. The arranger should have been locked out of the studio, but I was disappointed when George Maharis cut off his “Like a Rolling Stone” after one verse—he had it going. What am I Doing Here? award to Dionne. Not Up to the Challenge: the (caged) Animals.

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I read Mystery Train in college (circa 2005-06) and it profoundly changed how I view music (and made me appreciate Elvis a lot more) so thank you for that. I have two questions:

1) I know The Sopranos routinely tops your favorite TV shows when asked (thank you for not saying The Wire btw). Are there any favorite musical moments on it for you? Any songs you felt enhanced the scenes or tone of the episode (after being featured in the credits?).

2) What Beatles songs do you think reasonate with young people today? What have you seen or heard in your teaching experience? A brief review of their top 20 songs on Spotify reveals a preference for their folkier side (i.e., Rubber Soul) and Abbey Road. I actually find it a little depressing that their most streamed song is George's "Here Comes the Song." One billion streams! I liked that song when I was a kid and just getting into them but it's since lost all meaning (being overplayed at weddings and graduations etc.) I also think the revival of Laurel Canyon aesthetics has something to do with it and it gets lumped into there. I have actually begun to lean towards the material from 1963-65 a lot more since I think it gets neglected (although I actually quite like Sgt. Pepper—I know you don't) and viewed as "lesser than" than say the more obvious hits like "Let it Be" (never a favorite) or even "Come Together" (also never a favorite of mine). —ANTHONY VOLPE

I never got tired of Alabama 3’s “Woke Up This Morning” at the start of every Sopranos episode. There always seemed to be some shading of uncertainty, trepidation, resolve, or a dozen other moods that was new, that threw you off going into the show after that harsh electronic cut off.

I’m hardly alone thinking that the uncanny collage of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme” from the still-immersively atmospheric late ‘50s-early ‘60s noir TV series (watch any episode on YouTube; as a single the song was no. 8 in its own right in 1959) and the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” in the first episode of season 3 was perhaps the highlight of highlights of all use of music in a TV show. I remember when it came on I was so slayed by the conceptual brilliance of the idea and the deadly undertow of the music itself I could hardly speak.

Even if they did end the whole thing with Journey.

From the moment they appeared, it was sort of clear that anyone hearing “Something” or “Here Comes the Sun” in the moment was condemned to hearing them for as long as they lived. Just like “Feelings” or “The Greatest Love of All.” There are some vampires that just can’t be killed. It’s just one of those things about pop music. Songs like that are naturally filtered into the form and the next time you look they’re Mt. Everest. For that matter, were you ever to actually climb Mt. Everest you’d probably find someone up there playing “Here Comes the Sun” because, you know, it’s just so right!

I don’t know what Beatles songs resonate with young people today. I am pretty sure that if you had “Eight Days a Week” playing while little kids were running around they’d love it. And ask what it was. And then you could tell them the story 

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Are there any other works by Walter Mosley that have left an impression on you besides the ones you've mentioned in your Real Life Top 10 columns ,and of course RL's Dream? —BEN MERLISS

I think that whenever a book by Walter has come along that gives me anything to write about I have. I've read all the Easy Rawlins books, but his post-Watts riot Little Scarlet stands out. The stories in The Awkward Black Man. But I have written about those.  

Scrolling through his titles, though, I found one I didn't know about: The Walter Mosley Omnibus. I don't know what's in it. But the cover is beyond perfect, and could serve as the cover for a similar collection by any other hard-boiled detective novelist. Put on that hat, pull down the brim, go out the door.

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Have you seen this clip? Donovan tries to sing “Bert's Blues” (at The Glad Rag Ball, 19th November, 1965) but apparently some angry people in the crowd were rehearsing for the 1966 Bob Dylan & The Hawks concerts. Donovan really was the early bird in the mid-sixties. —ARNAUD

What strikes me about this is how, apparently, the mere sight of drums and a keyboard are enough of a signifier to some in the crowd that they take it as their cue to go off, playing the hater as defender of the faith. Or is it the Mose Allison rhythm he’s using that is some kind of threat to their identity? Or the problem that without the cool musicians and the visionary producer Mickie Most who made the song such a swirling dream on “Sunshine Superman” he can’t get the piece off to ground and maybe get people to actually listen and forget themselves for a moment?

If nothing else it’s a reminder of how ugly those kinds of protests are. The sound. And making you doubt your own humanity.

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Hi Greil - Each column provides a plethora of new (to me) songs and artists mentioned by you and letter writers. It is much appreciated!

Am hoping you can be the tie-breaker on these three subjective arguments regarding yay or nay to future Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Inductees:
1) Mink DeVille/Willy DeVille
2) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
3) Bob Seger
Many thanks for reading this—BILLY I.

Halls of Fame are odd things.  Anyone can get into the NBA or NFL halls. Baseball—forget about steroids—is extremely hard. Phil Spector used to talk about people who had made what he called “contributions.” Someone who had significantly altered the story of modern, postwar, in its true, widest sense, rock ‘n’ roll, or added something to it that, if life were fair, would always have to be taken into account. That’s my standard. Someone with one hit—or one record that’s not a hit—can make that contribution. “Angel Baby” by Rosie and the Originals. “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash (et al.).

Mink DeVille—“Cadillac Walk” is to me the whole story.  And it doesn’t rise to that level.  Its coded in the form.  Sooner or later someone else would have made that record. So no.

Nick Cave—hard. He’s done stuff no one else would have done: “Tupelo.” But I can never get out from under the feeling that it’s all shtick. Again, no.

Bob Seger had a long and scuffling career with big hits at the end. I don’t begrudge his “Like a Rock” commercial for Ford. Not that great a song anyway. But for a single song  that is not coded in the form but that the form wants—a song that so many people from Sam Cooke to Lana Del Rey could have written but didn’t—“Night Moves” goes over the bar and far past it. Except for the overdone ending, every word, lift, pause, pressure point—his honest sense of wonder—is way beyond right. So let’s call Bob Seger a one-hit wonder and vote him right in.

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Were you a fan of Lenny Bruce growing up in the Bay area and attending Berkeley in the '60's? Did you ever see him perform onstage? He died before Rolling Stone magazine emerged and one can only imagine what a great interview subject he might have been. Like Dylan, Bruce changed the art form and few, if any, have been as good at it since. According to his song “Lenny Bruce,” Dylan “Rode with him/In a taxi once/Only went a mile and a half/Seemed like it took a couple of months.” If there can be movies about Elvis and Nixon meeting, how about a play or movie of the Bob Dylan/Lenny Bruce cab ride? —JAMES STACHO

I never did see him. He did perform at the Fillmore in 1966. By then his shows were all outraged jurisprudence (as you can see in Luke Kirby’s last appearance as Bruce in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, set in San Francisco, where there’s a rather startling blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to his heroin use). He fell out of a hotel window at the time; Phil Spector (“Lenny Bruce died of an overdose of police”) excoriated Bill Graham in public for not supporting Bruce as he should have. Bruce was a presence. I listened to his albums and read his great book. But he was a little before my time.

Your idea of a cab ride film sounds more like a play to me—not to mention the infamous Dylan-Lennon car ride in footage and outtakes from D.A. Pennebaker’s unreleased film of Dylan’s 1966 European and UK tour, Something Is Happening, and the Eat the Document film Dylan made from Pennebaker’s footage (extended sequence on YouTube). For Bruce, definitely Kirby (Dustin Hoffman played him as a romantic hero and something of a chump, Kirby as a nihilist). For Dylan, Daniel Radcliffe. Or Ed Sheeran.

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What are your full views on the Talking Heads? (I couldn't make an approximation of them in my admittedly incomplete search through your archives).

Also since you seem to enjoy Bon Scott's AC/DC more than I realized at first, which of their works stand out the most to you? —BEN MERLISS

There has always been something arch and condescending about Taking Heads. When I first heard “Love arrow Building on Fire” I physically recoiled. On the other hand, I loved their cover of 1910 Fruitgum Company’s “1,2,3 Red Light.” I mean, I thought they loved the song, not that they were trying to make a point with an ironic gesture—Hugo Ball would have understood it as everything “I Zimbra” was pretending to be. There’s no question that Remain in Light is a stunningly original and transcendent piece of work. I’m still awestruck over it. The Name of This Band. . . is wonderful. I could go on. I suppose it comes down to the problem that I don’t like David Byrne (as a figure in culture—I don’t know him) but my life would be poorer if he hadn’t done some of what he’s done.

AC/DC—“It’s a Long Way to the Top.”

But why do you care what I think? What do you think?

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With your kind words about Rod Stewart at the Jeff Beck tribute, do you still stand by one of your most famous quotes ( paraphrasing "never has there been one as talented and never has one betrayed that talent so completely") about Rod Stewart? —RICHARD DENNIS

Sure. In an interview with Dan Rather which you can find on YouTube, Rather quoted that line back to Stewart, who said he essentially agreed—and then went on to say, confusing me with Lester Bangs, that the writer "had passed now," and that he never liked Stewart anyway—false for me, false for Lester, who wrote a lot of Paul Nelson's Rod Stewart book—including a long not used story of Rod's imagined boyhood and apprenticeship, singing to animals in the woods.

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